When Henry Jekyll's experiments with cocaine have gotten out of control, he transforms into the hideous Jack Hyde.
As Hyde he searches the London streets at night for his prey in whorehouses and opium dens.
The police can't catch him, he has nothing to lose but his mind.....
The illness wasn't doing Perkins any good at this late stage in his life, but thankfully he puts i a grandeur performance in what other wise is a film with all style and no substance.
By day, Perkins is the mild mannered doctor, just him, his wife, and a monkey in a cage with a shed load of coke.
By night he turns into some sort of New Romantic anti hero, Lipstick and all, and the film turns into some sort of Hazy Fantasy Simon Le Bon would be proud of.
And this is where it loses it's way. There s no real back up as to why the doctor sees that woman from the beginning. There is a hint that he is sexually repressed, but it's never really explored enough.
We are just treated to the fact that Jekyll hates women due to something that happened to him, so when he turns into Phil Oakey from the Human League, he can unleash the beast.
It's not a bad movie, just too eighties, if something could be that.
Worth watching for Perkins.
Edge of Sanity
1989
Action / Drama / Fantasy / Horror / Thriller
Edge of Sanity
1989
Action / Drama / Fantasy / Horror / Thriller
Plot summary
When his experiments into a powerful new anesthetic go hideously awry, respected physician Dr. Jekyll transforms into the hideous Jack Hyde. As his wife Elisabeth passes her time in charitable work, rehabilitating the district's fallen women, Hyde is drawn into an escalating cycle of lust and murder that seems to know no bounds.
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April 18, 2016 at 06:48 AM
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think I was dead?.....
Surprisingly perverse and unpleasant thriller.
I am not really surprised that "Edge of Sanity" has only a few reviews.This film is pretty tough to find,which is no bad thing.Anthony Perkins plays here Dr Jekyll/Jack Hyde,who as a Hyde murders and mutilates hookers in Jack the Ripper style.The acting from the supporting cast is diabolical,only Perkins proving effective,mainly due to his cadaverous features and tormented demeanor.The idea of a split personality with a particular sexual dysfunction also works with this material.Unfortunately the killings are mostly off-screen,but still "Edge of Sanity" has a pretty disturbing and sleazy quality to it.Some scenes are downright weird and rather unpleasant,so be prepared.Check it out,if you're curious.6 out of 10.
Edge of Sanity
Perverse, ugly, extremely dark variation on Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde and Jack the Ripper with Anthony Perkins once again summoning the dark side of his character to bring to life an evil psychopath deriving from a form of anesthesia, accidentally unleashed on Dr. Henry Jekyll while in his laboratory by a monkey test subject who spilled a bottle of solution into the powdery substance the scientist used to create his breakthrough in resolving pain during surgery. Smoked through an opium pipe, Jekyll loses his personality and morality as his dark half, Mr. Jack Hyde, surfaces to prowl White Chapel's lurid streets for prostitutes to slice up.
"Edge of Sanity" is practically wholly an unpleasant excursion into depravity and sadism as the movie stays mostly in the seedy underbelly of the dark section of London, rarely ever do we spend time with the "better" (although I felt even Jekyll, presented here, wasn't exactly free from the darkness that plagued his soul, as we see nightmares of a lustful hooker taking the rod from a local farmer who, after the doctor, as a child voyeur looking from the loft, slips, hooking himself upside down in the barn, takes a whipping on the tush from said farmer) half of the scientist. Since the Ripper was never caught, this film has perhaps the obvious outcome, but a certain incident which closes the film, involving Jekyll's morally upright wife (Glynis Barber), helping a church outreaching to prostitutes and the downtrodden, is rather unsettling.
This film spends a lot of time, unlike many other versions of the Jekyll/Hyde story, with Hyde instead of Jekyll, but we see, through Perkins, that battle within as the evil side of man's soul begins to control the personality, leaving a decent man adrift as darkness reigns. I guess the filmmakers decided that since Perkins is recognized as the kind of actor known for primarily showing the darker side of man's character, we should spend a great length with a really disturbing individual largely guided by a carnal incident from his childhood. The horror on Jekyll's face as that childhood memory emerges and Hyde is seeping into life, Perkins shows us a man run amok by dark forces he cannot control. To be honest, I can't imagine that many people finding this an experience worth taking, but I did think Perkins does an incredible job conveying pure evil, a true madman in search of a fresh victim worthy of destruction. The evocation of Period London (both the Victorian and especially the red light district of White Chapel where Madam Flora(Jill Melford) has a colorful house of ill repute) is affectively brought to life and director Gérard Kikoïne incorporates a visual style that allows madness to hit us right in the chops. Is this movie fun? Umm, not really. Is it good at what it does? If you mean, bringing to us a maniac on the loose in London slashing the throats of prostitutes after a few minutes of warped carnal activity (like Hyde masturbating a slut, on the roof top of a boardinghouse, with his cane as an apartment dweller looks on from his room, or slapping the ass of a tramp, putting her up against a wall on his knees, his face pressed up to his crotch, praying to God), then, yea, I think that is done with skill and ability. Included as a primary plot device is a prostitute in Madam Flora's den of hedonism, named Suzanna (Sarah Mahr Thorp), who looks exactly like the barn whore that haunts his nightmares, laughing and teasing. There's lots of that sort of thing: mocking and laughing, a tormented Jekyll unable to be separate from the woman that has continued to torture him, often in the guise of other women, remaining ever-present in the good doctor's fractured psyche.